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Birmingham pub bombings: Coroner rules fresh inquests to be held into deaths of 21 people Birmingham pub bombings: Fresh inquests to be held into deaths of 21 people
(35 minutes later)
New inquests will be held into the deaths of 21 people in the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings after "significant" new information emerged about the incident, a coroner has announced. Fresh inquests will be held into the deaths of 21 people in the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings after "significant" new information emerged about the incident, a coroner has announced.
More follows The families of some of those killed in the double bombing say the British state had knowledge of the attacks, planned by the IRA, before they were carried out.
Louise Hunt, the senior coroner for Birmingham and Solihull, said the decision to hold fresh inquests was made after the families put forward their claims in a series of recent review hearings.
Speaking ahead of any decision, Julie Hambleton, the leader of the Justice4the21 campaign which has called for new inquests, said: "All we want is the truth."
Her older sister, Maxine Hambleton, then 18, was one of the victims of a blast which ripped through the underground Tavern in the Town pub, minutes after a bomb destroyed the nearby Mulberry Bush at the base of the city centre Rotunda.
The bombings, which injured 182 people, are widely accepted to have been the work of the Provisional IRA, with the terrorist group's former intelligence director, Kieran Conway, recently describing the attacks as "an absolute disaster".
A botched investigation by West Midlands Police later led to a group of men, known now as the Birmingham Six, being wrongly jailed for the crime.
Hugh Callaghan, Patrick Joseph Hill, Gerard Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker spent more than 15 years in jail before their convictions were quashed at the Court of Appeal in 1991. They collectively received millions of pounds of compensation.